Background

Meet Jacob, a 26 year old autistic man and a resident at one of our services. Jacob moved into our service in May 2017. Jacob is a friendly, engaging person with a great sense of humour. He is an expert on a wide range of topics, and is particularly keen on facts and figures. Jacob enjoys a variety of activities and can often be found engaging in jigsaws, games and sensory activities.

Jacob spent four years at a specialist residential college and then moved into a supported living house with another autistic young man from college. Jacob’s mother Sasha explained that there were significant issues with the care provision, telling us: "From our perspective the problems basically came down to a lack of understanding of how to support autistic people, combined with poor management." As a result, Jacob began to struggle with his mental health. The placement broke down after nine months and Jacob moved back home with his mother and step dad. As well as being autistic, Jacob also has OCD and can get very anxious in certain situations. He gets very distracted with thoughts and counting. During his time at home Jacob became increasingly unable to take part in any activities without his mother due to his anxiety.

With family and long term friends Jacob is able to communicate verbally and articulate himself well and has a good vocabulary. However, he does not always fully understand the true meaning of the language he is using. Jacob is selectively mute and this became more significant after he left college. Due to anxiety he could not speak verbally to any support workers even though he wanted to.

How we supported him

Over the past two years, our key staff and Speech and Language Therapists have been working with Jacob and his family on communication techniques. Since April 2019 Jacob has also had a private therapist working with him and his staff on his anxiety around verbal communication. Staff use visual communication tools, including TEACCH boards, total communication, Makaton and social stories. Jacob has also used a specialist communication tablet. This came in handy when he went out and about in his local community. Jacob responds well to simple, direct phrases. He has enjoyed exploring many different ways of communicating. In particular, he has proved to be a dab hand at finger spelling and recently taught members of staff how to finger spell their own names. With encouragement from our staff, Jacob has gained confidence in his ability to express himself non verbally and has started to talk to some members of staff.

Outcome

During his time with us Jacob has built positive relationships with our staff members - particularly his key worker Abigail. Abigail has supported Jacob for two years and her support with him has been outstanding. Initially, it was difficult for Jacob to communicate with Abigail. Until July 2019, he communicated with her using signs and writing on a whiteboard. She explains that she often had to guess what he was trying to tell her. Although there are times when Jacob still struggles to express to himself, he has learned to trust Abigail and now the two verbally communicate with each other.